Building a Spaceship in Dungeons & Dragons, Part 2.5

This is an update to Spaceships in D&D Parts I and II. I had hoped to give you an update to Rock to Hide Me instead, based on a paper I found on a government server. But unfortunately, after I read it, I concluded the paper in question was so mercilessly boring that I don't think I can turn it into an article that anyone would want to read. So, on to the next item on the itinerary instead!

I've made some significant modifications and updates to Spaceships in D&D Part I and II, responding to and incorporating some suggestions and criticisms by commenters on them – suggestions and criticisms more than a year old (egg on face), but better late than never. I'd particularly like to thank Brian Ballsun-Stanton, who made a number of very helpful comments. So as not to make everyone reread those articles, I will be discussing the changes separately here. Part III in the series, on mission planning, will follow, hopefully in the not too distant future. There may or may not be a Part IV, on things to do in space, depending on what I come up with.

Atomic-Powered Tanks, Part 2: Tank Harder

Still a terrible idea.

Atomic-Powered Tanks, Part 1

An atomic-powered tank is a terrible idea. But that's never kept people from trying.

Burning Gas

On August 9^th, 1957, a team of Russian scientists brought a prototype reactor of a radical new kind to criticality. This reactor was fueled by gaseous uranium hexafluoride – the first gas-fueled reactor ever built.[KDG]

Realism in Atompunk

Sorry for how dead this has been; math has been keeping me busy.   Fortunately, my thesis is finally (finally) done, so with a little luck I'll be able to start posting more often again.   As a first installment on that promise, an essay of mine has been posted at Alternate History Weekly Update for its fifth anniversary: How to Write a Realistic Atompunk Timeline.

Under Cover: The Schoharie Valley Townsite Project

With Special Thanks to Anthony Casendino

In 1959, the Cornell College of Architecture launched a study to design a city that could survive nuclear attack. In the view of Prof. Fredrick W. Edmondson, existing cities were ill-suited to the demands of the Cold War, and he proposed to design from whole cloth a new alternative, better adapted to the rigors of the nuclear age. The Schoharie Valley Townsite project was one of the most ambitious civil defense proposals of the Cold War: a factory-town that could not only withstand nuclear attack, but maintain war production even as the hydrogen bombs burst around it.

Building a Spaceship in Dungeons and Dragons, Part II

Previous installment here.

Now we come to the interesting part: propulsion.

Two Links

I'm all over the place!   Specifically, my article "Alternate Nuclear Wars" can now be read at Alternate History Weekly Update.   In addition, my previous blog post on third-generation nuclear weapons can now also be read on William Black's deviantart.   Although most of you have probably already read that, you should check out his gallery anyway; Mr. Black is an extremely talented digital artist, who has contributed many of the images of Orions and other atompunk spacecraft you can see in such places as Atomic Rocket.

Sadly, I must warn you not to get used to this pace of updates.   A bunch of projects just happened to be completed at once.

Third-Generation Nuclear Weapons

I ran into this stuff while working on something else, and thought it was interesting enough to be worth sharing.   I may or may not do a longer article on this at some point; getting more information on this is likely to be very difficult, given that the US government holds this stuff pretty close to its chest (as it should).

So what, exactly, is a third-generation nuclear weapon?

Building a Spaceship in Dungeons and Dragons

Why? Because we can, that's why.

D&D space travel has been done before, usually with teleportation magic (or Spelljammers). What I'm setting out to do here, though, is to build an actual spaceship, that actually traverses the space it crosses. Specifically, I want to design a spaceship that can be built at the lowest level possible – most of the components are actually fairly cheap since the designers weren't expecting you to apply physics to them. The ship will be designed for a 1-man crew, but should be readily adaptable to larger crews.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm well aware this is deeply silly. For those of you here for the nuclear history, don't worry. This blog is still about history; this is just a momentary diversion. So if you don't like D&D just skip this and come back later.

The Philosopher's Bomb, Part 3

Those Magnificent Men and their Atomic Machines

The Philosopher's Bomb: The AEC Effort to Create New Elements with Nuclear Explosions

Part III

Back to Part I, Part II

With Special Thanks to Dr. Stephen A. Becker and Dr. David W. Dorn

DURYEA through VULCAN

The AEC fired four more heavy element tests in the spring of 1966: DURYEA (April 14 1966, 70 kT, LRLL), CYCLAMEN (May 5 1966, 12 kT, LASL), KANKAKEE (June 15 1966, 20 to 200 kT, LRLL), and VULCAN (June 25 1966, 25 kT, LRLL).^[GURC][Be2] DURYEA was a failure, but I haven't been able to find out anything else about it. The other shots left more concrete records.

Partial List of US Scientific Nuclear Tests

I'm posting this as a separate post, prior to posting Part 3 of The Philosopher's Bomb, because there's a very common misconception about how many nuclear shots the Plowshare program fired off.   Most lists of Plowshare tests do not include most of these tests, because they were officially sponsored by the AEC's Division of Military Applications as military tests, and the incorporated experiment was only an add-on.   Nonetheless, if we ignore them - which almost all histories of the Plowshare program do - we're missing an important part of the story.

War in the Atomic Age?

So, last week I snagged a rather entertaining little item through interlibrary loan.

 Figure 1: War in the Atomic Age? Cover

(Public Domain)

A Friendly Shout-Out to the Neighbors

I don't often make posts that are just links to something else.   That's very deliberate, both because I want to maintain a high quality:quantity ratio, and because I think relatively few sites are really working in the same specific niche I'm trying to work in.   I'm going to make an exception today: check out Atomic Annihilation, "the internet's most complete guide to the end of the world".   I particularly recommend 1952...destruction and 1946...wacky!

Learning from the Storm

 On March 21^st, 1952, a cluster of tornadoes struck the Mississippi valley. The damage stretched across nine states; 231 people died and 1,829 were injured. In White County, Arkansas, a pair of cyclones leveled the town of Judsonia, destroyed 650 buildings, and killed 46 people.^[Qu5]

Thirteen days later, as the townsfolk were still picking through the wreckage, twenty-six scientists arrived in Judsonia from Chicago. Instead of first aid kits and blankets, they carried tape recorders and notebooks. They fanned out across White County, picked a representative cross-section of homes, and asked their inhabitants if they could interview them.

To their own surprise, most of the people they asked said yes.

Do You Want To Help Build the First Nuclear-Powered Airplane?

Then Pratt & Whitney wants you!   Or did, sixty years ago.

I ran across these while skimming old Newsweeks.   Unfortunately, doesn't look like they need mathematicians.   Also, I think the job might have been filled by now.

Toxic Stars

I'm not dead!   Really, I'm not.   Just busy.   Don't worry, I haven't abandoned the blog; I have a few things that should be going up here over the next few months.

One of the things that's been keeping me busy is Toxic Stars: The Future of Humankind in the Cthulhu Mythos, a Lovecraftian transhumanist space opera.   I've been posting it on a forum behind a registration barrier, but I've decided to put it up in public.   If you're interested, you can find it here.

Happy Moonwalk Day

At 9:56 PM today, Eastern Standard Time, forty-five years ago, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the lunar surface.

When times are hard, when the world seems filled with evil, hold that moment in your mind, when human feet first set foot on another world, and remember: together, there is nothing we cannot do.

Guest Post at ClarksonPunk

Hi!   Sorry for the slow posting.   Things, hopefully interesting things, are in progress here, but are not yet ready for the light of day.   Also, I'm writing my thesis, which obviously takes up a certain amount of time.   In the meantime, you can satisfy your craving for my writing with a guest post I wrote at the blog ClarksonPunk: An Atompunk Manifesto.

Gimme Shelter

“It's a den of noise

Filled with fidgety boys

Our home beneath the firmament

And I'm glad it's a phase

Just lasting two days

Rather than something that's permanent.”

-”The Shelter”^[SESP]

On July 31^st, 1959, two young parents and their three children entered an 8-foot-by-9-foot soundproof room in the basement of a laboratory at Princeton University. They stayed inside for the next fourteen days.^[Ve][MN]